Redeeming Pieter Coecke van Aelst’s Gluttony Tapestry: Learning from Scientific Analysis

Abstract

Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502 – 1550) was one of the most celebrated Netherlandish artists of his generation.1 An important panel painter and printer of influential architectural treatises, Coecke was above all a master draftsman-designer, and the primary medium for his artistic expression was tapestry design. Tapestry series based on his cartoons were woven up by the celebrated Brussels-based workshops directed by Willem de Pannemaker and Willem de Kempeneer, as well as lesser-known weavers like Jan van der Vijst and Paulus van Oppenem, and were acquired by the great Renaissance collectors, from Henry VIII to Francis I, Mary of Hungary, Charles V, and Cosimo I de’ Medici. The three securely documented tapestry series that form the core of Pieter Coecke van Aelst’s stylistically attributed body of works are the Life of Saint Paul, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Story of Joshua.2 These were all phenomenally successful and woven in multiple high-quality editions. The Seven Deadly Sins, in particular, is one of the most appealing and inventive series of Renaissance tapestries known, presenting a subversive triumphal procession of the vices across seven tapestries, each devoted to a different sin. Uniquely for tapestries of this period, a written program survives in a manuscript in Madrid, describing the “significance of the seven tapestries of the seven deadly sins by Willem de Pannemaker of which master Pieter of Aelst, painter of Antwerp, made the designs and compositions.”3 Coecke probably began designing the Sins in late 1532, pausing during 1533, when he traveled to Constantinople (in part on a tapestry-selling expedition to Süleyman the Magnificent), completing the design of the series after his return in early 1534. Of the earliest documented edition, woven before 1536, which belonged to Henry VIII, only Avarice survives; it is now in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.4 Of the three best-preserved Seven Deadly Sins editions, one (Figure 1) originally belonged to Mary of Hungary (1505 – 1558), governor of the Habsburg Netherlands (1531 – 55). Made before 1544, it is now in the Spanish Patrimonio Nacional. Another (Figure 2), made about 1545, was first acquired by the unfortunate Count Lamoraal van Egmont, prince of Gavere (1522 – 1568). Follow ing Egmont’s execution, it passed to Philip II and is now also in the Patrimonio Nacional. The third, woven about 1548 – 49 and probably originally in the collection of the dukes of Lorraine, is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.5 Since 1957, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has owned one piece of the Seven Deadly Sins that Coecke designed; it represents Gluttony and is the only known survival from this, the fifth known edition (Figure 3).6 In a breathtakingly colorful sweep of twisting figures, fantastical beasts, and patterned cloth and trappings, the figures unfurl across the tapestry’s surface.7 The textile’s well-preserved, vivid palette enlivens the full subtleties of Coecke’s design. Owing to the Redeeming Pieter Coecke van Aelst’s Gluttony Tapestry: Learning from Scientific Analysis